Increase the success of your events with feedback

Basically, a seminar evaluation is a subjective judgement of an interactive learning and teaching event in which a seminar leader or trainer imparts and deepens knowledge on a specific topic to a group of people. The participants of the seminar are actively involved in the learning and teaching event. This form of knowledge transfer is often offered for professional training.

Mostly a seminar is a one-time event, which is carried out in one day. Depending on the content of the topic and the intensity, it can, however, also be spread over several days. In addition to theoretical content, practical parts such as role-plays, teamwork or discussion groups are also included in the learning and teaching event, for a more effective learning experience. At the end of each seminar there should be a seminar evaluation that captures the impressions of a participant.

The goal of the seminar evaluation is to use the insights and potential for improvement gained from the evaluation to sustainably increase and maintain the quality of the seminar offered.

The three types of knowledge transfer differ fundamentally in the methodology of how knowledge is taught.

In a seminar , the contents of the event are taught in stages over a longer period of time. For this purpose, both theoretical and practical contents are used for teaching.

A workshop, on the other hand, is an event similar to a seminar, but in which the content of a specific topic is developed by the participants themselves, in cooperation and moderation with the workshop leader. The elaboration is carried out with the help of practical exercises such as presentations and discussion groups.

A conference (synonyms: congress or meeting) differs from a seminar in that it is planned over several days, is a group of several people working on the same topic and knowledge transfer takes place through lectures, presentations, workshops and panel discussions.

There are different times to obtain appropriate feedback from the seminar participants. You can, for example, ask the participants about their expectations, interests and needs a few days or weeks before the seminar starts in order to adapt the seminar based on this. In this way, you will increase the success of your seminar immensely, since you as a service provider will meet exactly the expectations that the seminar should ultimately be about.

Another possibility to get feedback from the seminar participants would be on the seminar day itself. For example, you could collect feedback after each item on the programme, during coffee breaks or before the last item on the seminar programme. This has the advantage that, on the one hand, the seminar participants are likely to answer the questions on the questionnaire more attentively and carefully. In addition, instead of a long questionnaire, you can pack your questions into several short interviews and distribute them during the individual breaks for completion. The results could be discussed at the final meeting and individual points could be dealt with more specifically.

Another way to get the feedback that is so important for you would be a few days (not weeks) later after the seminar has taken place. At that time, the seminar participant has most likely processed the teaching and learning content conveyed in the seminar, possibly gained initial practical experience in its implementation and formed a firm opinion about the seminar offered.

It would be even better, however, to use surveys at all points of the event (before, during and after the seminar) instead of just collecting feedback at a specific point in time during the seminar. This way, you will receive continuous feedback and can continuously adapt the seminar in a way that promises success. Don’t be afraid of the possibilities of surveys and use them to optimize your seminar to an all-round successful experience for you and the participants.

Regardless of which option you choose for obtaining feedback, it is important that you make your event visitors aware of the importance of the questionnaire. After all, the aim of the questionnaire is to ensure and increase the quality of your seminar in the long term. Above all, give your seminar evaluators enough time to fill out the questionnaire carefully. Especially if you distribute it after the event. He will most likely not be able to give immediate feedback, but you should still define a survey period with an end date for submission.

Finally, you must also evaluate the questionnaire and define and implement suitable optimization measures.

Tips for evaluating your seminar feedback are available here.

First, you can and should make the participant of your seminar survey aware of the importance and goal of participating. Give them the feeling that their opinion is important for the future success of the seminar. On the other hand, you can also motivate participants to take part with incentives, in the form of vouchers or prize draws.

But also from a methodological point of view, you can encourage and motivate seminar participants to give their opinion on the seminar held. This can be done by the length of the questionnaire, its design or the way in which you ask the participants. The latter is particularly interesting, as you can also obtain feedback in a playful way, for example, by means of a quiz.    

Furthermore, you can increase the motivation to participate by the type of survey itself. You can conduct surveys either in a classic way via pen & paper or online with a modern and unique participant experience.

How long a questionnaire for the evaluation of a seminar should be cannot be said in general terms. In general, a questionnaire should be kept as short as possible, as the participants of a seminar usually do not have the time or desire to fill it out. Generally speaking, the longer the questionnaire, the less willing the participants are to fill it out carefully and honestly. In the end, this has a negative effect on the quality of the answers given and thus on the evaluation and interpretation of the results.

So in order to obtain good usable data from a seminar evaluation, the feedback questionnaire should not contain too many questions and should be equipped with simple questions and question types if possible. If you need many questions for a thorough evaluation of your seminar, another option would be to distribute these questions in several short questionnaires and to output them at different times.

This depends strongly on the structure and content of your seminar. Nevertheless, the following structure of a seminar questionnaire can be defined as a basic framework:

1. Evaluation of the organisation and general conditions

Get feedback from seminar participants regarding the venue, equipment or catering and more. The answers you receive will give you an excellent opportunity to create the environment as well as the framework for an educationally supportive learning atmosphere.

2. Evaluation of the seminar leader

The success of a seminar depends strongly on the seminar leader. As a moderator and teacher, he or she must have the competence to teach didactically and also have social skills in order to best fulfil the educational function of the event. Therefore, the seminar leader himself must be evaluated after each event in order to constantly improve the quality of his teaching.

3. Evaluation of the contents and the methodical design

Theoretical as well as practical contents of a seminar should not bore the participant and hinder the learning process. Make sure that your seminar is varied and provides added value for the participants. Therefore, it is best to ask before the event, about the individual interests, wishes and expectations of each participant. After the event, you will then have the opportunity to measure the satisfaction and the degree to which the expectations were fulfilled.

4. Praise, criticism and opportunities for improvement

Right here, is the gold of her seminar interview. So don’t be afraid to ask what you can improve on your course in the future. Only through the constructive feedback of your participants you can constantly improve the quality of your seminar.

5. General information

At the end of the questionnaire, you have the opportunity to obtain further relevant information about the participant group. For example, ask about the reasons for participation or about their current professional activities. Such information will help you to market the seminar more effectively to your target groups.

In addition to the feedback from the seminar evaluations, the organisation is also involved. If you as a seminar provider offer a large number of seminars, the integration of Feedback Management must be as easy and convenient as possible.

At this point easyfeedback offers you different methods. On the one hand, you can use automated parameters on the survey link to control participation via your own system, or you can use the API (connection) provided for your favorite tool and include the invitation and evaluation in your system landscape.

A successful seminar can definitely increase the own customer (customer experience)  as well as the employee experience of the customer (mostly companies).

Both customer and employee experience management are clearly about satisfying the needs and wishes of each individual in the best possible way. If you continuously optimize your seminar with the help of seminar evaluations, you create a positive added value for yourself, your customers and ultimately for the participants.

The goal should be to completely fulfill the (further) educational purpose of a seminar in line with expectations. Especially customers who purchase your service, for example to train their employees in their tasks, should be satisfied with your event in the end. This will have a lasting effect on the booking of further seminars by the same customer.

But also the trained employees would be satisfied with your event, as long as you convey the contents of the seminar in a way that promotes learning and take individual wishes and interests into account. A successful seminar can pay off for companies by increasing employee satisfaction and for you by positive recommendation.